In defense of public employees

Excuse me while I do a tiny bit of national commentary ... I will bring it back to a local angle, I promise.

I recall a couple years ago having a conversation with a friend who was far more deferential than I to the wisdom of America's business elite.

I told him there was something very pernicious about the worship of financial success. When the rich believe their wealth is entirely due to their competence, rather than their luck, they begin to believe there is nothing they can learn from the rest of us. It doesn't occur to them that a kindergarten teacher may be just as smart as they are. They assume that somebody who chooses such a quaint profession must lack the ambition, guts or smarts to do big things. Thus, even if we're talking about improving early childhood education, these little NPCs (Non Player Characters) have nothing to contribute to the conversation. It's the Great Men who will figure it out.

"Well people who think like that are assholes," said my friend.

Indeed. And those assholes are now running our federal government.

Some of the buffoonery taking place, such as putting a crank like RFK Jr in charge of the health department, can be viewed as a backlash against elites and "experts." But what Elon Musk and DOGE are doing is just straight up elitism, albeit an elitism that is based entirely on wealth. The wealth he has accrued is proof there is nothing he can't do or understand. Therefore, if he looks at a job or agency and doesn't immediately understand its value, it must be useless. And thus, those who worked in those jobs and the families they supported with those salaries deserve no sympathy. Their pain is just.

The arrogance of the rich and the contempt of public service has probably always been a part of U.S. politics. But the public delight that Musk and others are taking in making people unemployed is something new. In my 15 years of covering local and state governments, I've never seen political leaders conduct mass firings without any expression of sympathy for the employees and their families.

Just look at Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature. They're pushing a voucher plan that will likely do severe harm to public education, but at least they're not going around and celebrating school closures. In fact, they're calling for big raises for public school teachers.

Or, look at the effort led by Greg Casar to cut the police department budget in 2020. He successfully pushed for the elimination of vacant positions, but he didn't call for laying off existing police officers. Nobody was interested in that.

When I used to cover the Travis County Commissioners Court, then-Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, the lone Republican, was very wary of increased spending, but I never once heard him denigrate the work of county employees. In fact, when he raised a fuss about the commissioners voting for big hikes to their own pay, he said it was an insult to the thousands of rank-and-file county workers who not getting nearly as big pay raises.

My hope is that this assault on public service offers an opportunity for Americans to better-appreciate the work their taxes pay for. There is certainly waste in government, but there is also an enormous amount of value –– value that cannot be replicated by a Silicon Valley startup or Wall Street hedge fund.

That is clear to me anytime I walk into a library. There is no private sector business model for creating a space that is open to anyone, anytime, for free. There is no business model for buying books and then letting people borrow them for free. The people who work there in my experience are almost always exceedingly kind and eager to help because they have a deep attachment to the mission of the public institution. Unlike the tech barons who get front row seats at the inauguration, the space they maintain is a truly public one that demands nothing –– no money, no data –– in return. What a bunch of suckers.

From the archives: when Austin adopted a 40-hour workweek

Speaking of respect for public employees...I was perusing minutes from ancient City Council meetings today and happened to come upon the meeting on Jan. 6, 1955 when Council voted to adopt a 40-hour workweek for civilian city employees.

Firefighters would remain on a 63-hour workweek and police on a 48-hour workweek.

It's not clear to me what the typical hours were of civilian city workers, but it was apparently more than 40. The measure was also apparently included pay raises.

Speaking in favor of the measure, Councilman Pearson (I can't find his first name anywhere) said:

"I am going to vote for this because I think it will conform to what is being practiced by all other large governmental bodies and also a lot of the larger commercial firms, and I think it is only fair to all city employees to make them all on an equal basis. I think they will do a better job, and there is no reason why they should not work harder now."

In bitter dissent was Councilman T.R. Thompson:

"Because I cannot succumb to the illusion that they are all going to break their necks working hard because they are getting a few less hours a week; and because I cannot go along following a precedent set by a super-liberal national administration to practically wreck this country with its socialistic philosophy; and because of the fact that I cannot, with good sincerity, load $280,000 more on the now burdened shoulders of the Austin tax payers, I am going to vote 'no'."

I also couldn't find much about Thompson online, but I suspect that he was reincarnated as former District 6 Council Member Don Zimmerman.

It's pretty disorienting to see someone denounce the Eisenhower administration as a "super-liberal" purveyor of "socialistic philosophy," but it's true that Ike expanded Social Security and did not contest the welfare state erected by the New Deal. Indeed, as a letter he penned to his brother in 1954 showed, he had nothing but contempt for those who sought to eviscerate the social safety net:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H.L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Their numbers remain negligible, but unfortunately they are no longer mere millionaires.

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